State reps agree to pay what Legislature owes, mostly to Medicaid

State representatives agreed unanimously Thursday to pay off $4.8 billion in what the Legislature owes, with $4.5 billion related to Medicaid and health in a special supplemental appropriations bill.

“This is something we needed to do to ensure that 3 million Texans continue to receive medical treatment,” said state Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee that writes the budget.

Democrats held off strong complaints about the bill not addressing $5.4 billion cuts in public education from the last session, but Pitts replied as he put the bill forward, “Members, this is not a school finance bill.”

More supplemental appropriations bills are set to go to the House later.

During the 2011 session, to maneuver around a $27 billion shortfall, the legislators deferred paying for Medicaid and made the public education cuts.

“Last session when we ended with a huge gap in Medicaid and public education, a lot of us were truly chagrined, but the strategy actually worked,” state Rep. Garnet Coleman, R-Houston, said. “We still have a ways to go on education.”

Republicans have said they want to wait until school lawsuits are settled.

The lawsuits argue that Texas schools are inadequately and inequitably funded, and one judge already has said the system violates the constitution.

Democrats had been poised to argue for more

funding in public education.

One pre-filed amendment from state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said “The Legislature makes the following findings relating to the inadequate funding of public schools in the state” but didn’t contain any more information.

Martinez Fischer had been considering the prospect of adding to the amendment, but he removed it instead.

State Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, had an amendment pre-filed to allocate $150 million for security services for public schools, a symbolic move since the rules for amending the bill are extremely limited.

Other lawmakers filed similar amendments, including asking for $33.7 million for education grants, and $200 million for transportation.

A standard rule that passed in the House Calendars Committee, however, prohibited additions to the supplemental appropriations bill that passed the House on Thursday, meaning the legislators couldn’t tack on money to undo cuts to education or add money for other services in this bill.

“The amendment that I offered was a way to try to make sure that we don’t forget that public education is a priority,” but he still supported the bill, Herrero said.

There are still talks about restoring some of the money that was cut from education in 2011.

Pitts said a bipartisan group is talking about school finance.

A future bill also would reverse a school deferral, a bookkeeping maneuver in which legislators moved a pay date to schools up one day so the payment would fall into the next fiscal year.

This deferral would cost $1.8 billion.

Another IOU still waiting to be paid is about $161 million in funds payable for the expenses incurred in fighting wildfires.

The cost is largely to pay off bills from the federal government, Robby DeWitt, the chief financial officer for the Texas A&M Forest Service, said.

The federal government helped with aircraft and ground resources, DeWitt said.

During the 2011 fire season, about 4 million acres burned and more than 2,900 homes were destroyed, according to Texas A&M Forest Service records.

The representatives voted to suspend Texas constitutional rules to fast-track the House Bill 10, the Medicaid supplemental payment bill, out of the House and get it to the Senate.

“The bill is designed to gain swift approval by the House and Senate, which would allow it to be sent to the governor and certified by the comptroller in time to meet an approaching deadline for payments to doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes,” according to a state analysis of the bill. “(The Texas Health and Human Services Commission) estimates that funds for these payments could run dry by mid-March without supplemental funds.”

Each biennium generally has a supplemental appropriations bill that passes later in the session because of the difficulty of trying to make a budget that covers two years, coupled with the imprecision of working with estimates of how much money the state will get.

The Texas Legislature meets every two years and writes a budget to cover two years.

Pitts said in his more than 20 years in the Legislature he had never seen an appropriations bill go through as early as the Medicaid IOU bill.

Rick Spruill contributed to this report.

Matthew Waller is assigned to cover the 2013 Legislature for Scripps Texas Newspapers and works in Austin. Contact him at mwaller@gosanangelo.com or via Twitter @waller_matthew.